Today’s digest opens with the front page splash of the Indie which highlights the latest draconian ‘changes’ to the UK’s benefit system. Harsh rules to supposedly drive the long term unemployed into work - in reality into volunteering roles or off the jobless stats altogether – take force from today. Unite assistant general secretary Steve Turner said: “This scheme is nothing more than forced unpaid labour and there is no evidence that these workfare programmes get people into paid work in the long-term. We are against this scheme wherever ministers want to implement it – in the private sector, local government and in the voluntary sector.” Contrasting the ‘workfare’ scheme with criminal punishments, Steve continued: “The hours demanded by workfare are greater than a community service order you would get for a criminal offence, such as punching someone in the street – this is just bonkers. What the long queues of Britain’s unemployed need are proper jobs with decent pay and a strong system of apprenticeships for young people to offer them a sustainable employment future. What is being introduced today is shoddy. It will displace existing workers and enslave work-seekers.” How low will the coalition go, very.

And for an example of how the world of work hits people in modern Britain, the Mail is one of a number of papers that report that one in three workers struggle to cope due to depression, stress or burn out, while the Times reports that 430,000 disabled people quit their jobs last year, more than double the rate that found employment, while the paper also argues that young people are increasingly fearful of job prospects, more than one in 20 young people have applied for over 20 jobs and many are willing to work unpaid. Is this the best the seventh biggest economy has to offer? Remember after five years of the Con-Dem coalition the government’s own statistics show that the vast majority of people will be worse off, it’s time for an end to the austerity addiction and for jobs, homes and hope…